Fête Music Hall Presents

Saturday, December 2nd

Fête LoungeDoors: 7:00 PMTickets: ADV $20 • DOS $25 • VIP $70All Ages

Kris Allen

On New Year’s Day in 2013, Kris Allen and his then-pregnant wife Katy were in a head-on collision that left the
singer/songwriter/guitarist with a career-threatening shattered wrist. In the two years that followed, he underwent three
surgeries, re-learned how to play guitar (despite regaining just 30 percent movement in the damaged wrist), recorded his third
album, and toured relentlessly—including a two-month-long stint that started just one week after his accident. The American
Idol season 8 winner ultimately retreated from the whirlwind and immersed himself in a songwriting spell that yielded more
than 70 new tracks. Culled from that collection of songs, Allen’s fourth full-length album Letting You In finds the Nashville-based
artist delivering his most intimate and dynamic work to date.

The follow-up to 2014’s Horizons, Letting You In builds off the soulful musicality Allen first showcased with his platinum-selling
2009 single “Live Like We’re Dying.” But with its sophisticated songcraft and vulnerable lyrics, Letting You In reaches a new
depth of feeling that infuses each track with undeniable emotional power. “Looking back, I think I tried to put off dealing with
my feelings around the accident for as long as I could,” says Allen. “But in the past year I’ve realized how much it all affected
me, and that definitely came out in the writing of this album.”

Allen recorded in Nashville with producers Konrad Snyder (Mat Kearney, Owl City, Milo Greene), Ian Fitchuk (James Bay, Drew
Holcomb & the Neighbors, Griffin House), and Grammy Award-winner Brown Bannister (Amy Grant, Kenny Rogers, Steven
Curtis Chapman) and made a point of exploring both the bright and dark elements of everyday life. “There’s almost two
different sides to the record,” Allen notes. “On one hand you’ve got these happy love songs, because that’s my life—I’m a
happily married guy, everything with my family’s really great. But internally I was going through some things and trying to figure
out my life, and the rest of the album very much came from that.”

The latter category of songs includes “My Time Will Come,” whose lyrics reflect on Allen’s struggles with self-doubt (“Lately I’ve
been making friends with the doubts in my head/Hanging on every word that they’ve said”). But with its lilting guitar melodies
and soaring vocals, the song ultimately emerges as an anthem of gritty perseverance. On “If We Keep Doing Nothing,” Allen
offers a poignant look outward. Written in the wake of the mass shooting at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College, the song’s
throwback-soul arrangement of stark guitar tones and stirring organ lines provide a powerful backdrop for a determined
meditation on gun violence.

While Letting You In takes on its share of weighty matters, the album radiates a hopeful spirit that’s got everything to do with
Allen’s easy warmth and open-heartedness as a songwriter and vocalist. One of Letting You In’s most uplifting tracks, “Way Up
High” blends cascading guitar lines, breezy melodies, and slice-of-life storytelling that came to Allen while flying back home
after spending days away from his family. “Usually when I’m writing a song I start with the music, but with ‘Way Up High’ the
lyrics all came to me in poem form,” he says. “I just tried to get down all these thoughts that were rolling through my head at
the time, in a very stream-of-consciousness sort of way, and it all felt really natural.” And among the love songs that make up
much of Letting You In is “Waves,” whose gospel-inspired harmonies and spirited piano work perfectly together in capturing the
tenderness of Allen’s opposites-attract serenade to his wife.

Allen first picked up the guitar at age 13, after spending much of his childhood singing in church in his hometown of
Jacksonville, Arkansas. Writing his first song in his late teens, he self-released an album at age 22 and auditioned for the eighth
season of American Idol the following year. Several months after his Idol victory Allen put out his self-titled major label debut,
with lead single “Live Like We’re Dying” climbing to the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100. In addition to releasing his sophomore
album Thank You Camellia in 2012, he spent the next several years sharing stages with such artists as Maroon 5 and Keith
Urban, as well as landing Billboard, Teen Choice and People’s Choice Awards nominations.

In the aftermath of his accident, Allen devoted himself to relearning guitar, adjusting his technique to adapt to the lack of
movement in his wrist. “At first I thought I’d never be able to play again,” he recalls. “But once I got my cast off, I spent more
time playing than I ever had in my life. Through all that I realized that I shouldn’t take my craft for granted, so I really focused
on developing it and becoming even stronger as a guitar player than I ever was before.”

Along with rebuilding his guitar skills, Allen revamped his approach to songwriting and soon saw a resurgence in his creativity.
“When I’ve made albums in the past, there’ve always been other artists and songwriters that I was using as reference points,”
says Allen, who names Stevie Ray Vaughan and Stevie Wonder among his earliest inspirations. “But this time I shut myself off
from all that, and just focused on making music that was completely true to me.”

That process proved both thrilling and daunting, but in the end instilled him with a new sense of purpose as an artist. “When I
first started making music, it was very much coming from a place of ‘Are people gonna like this?’” he recalls. “But as I was
making this album, it really became more about being genuine and writing songs that feel good. My hope is that if those songs
mean a lot to me, they’ll mean a lot to the people listening, and that they’ll get some of that hopeful feeling too.”

Not too long after the release of Letting You In, Allen delivered his first full-length Christmas album, Somethin' About Christmas,
which is a delightful combination of originals and Christmas classics. Some of the Christmas classics that may ring a bell include
“Jingle Bells” (featuring former contestant of “The Voice”, Caroline Glaser) and “Winter Wonderland” (featuring Jillian
Edwards), just to name a few. The originals on this album, such as “Somethin’ About Christmas Morning” (featuring Gabe
Dixon) and “Peace and Happiness”, provide a jazzy and joyful feel, which is what Allen was wanting to create. “I genuinely love
Christmas music and how it can transport you to such a joyful and fun place,” he says. “I think for a lot of people, it is those
traditions in Christmas that they love, and I wanted my album "Somethin' About Christmas" to become a new tradition for
people to enjoy this time of year.” For fans looking to get in the Christmas spirit, Allen has decided to hit the road this winter for
a Christmas tour.

____________

Marie Miller

When Marie Miller writes a song, she does what all gifted writers do: She looks at her life and into her heart to make sure what she creates comes from real emotion and experience.

She also does something none of peers likely do: She searches through classic literature, whether it be Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy or Homer. There, she finds parallels for what she wants to say, channels that inspiration into her lyrics and comes up with something unique: Music that’s immediate and timeless, driven by feelings alllisteners can relate to yet infused with a perspective that transcends the present.

“I have a song called ‘Story’ on my new album,” she explains, referencing Letterbox, scheduled for release in the spring of 2017 on Curb Records. “It brings in a lot of epic characters: Heathcliff and Catherine from Wuthering Heights,Hector’s wife Andromache from The Iliad. I’ve always loved epic stories —Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment—because they’re filled with relationships that are super serious and dramatic. Sometimes I feel like I’m right there in the midst of them.”

Yet Letterboxis no droning lecture on literature. It’s a celebration of freedom. Miller has paid plenty of dues to get to the point where she feels she can write what she wants how she wants to, and sing without constraint. Still young, she has survived years in the music business. She impacted initially withthe infectious,“You’re Not Alone.” More than 115,000 downloaded that single on Amazon. ABC’s Dancing with the Starsfeatured her second single, “6’2,” in 2014.

That’s a success story for sure, one that Miller is grateful to have had. Still, she realized that this was only the first of many steps she needed to take to achieve her goals.

Much more than literature feeds into Miller’s unfettered performance on Letterbox. First and most enduring is the foundation she received from being born into a family that loved and performed music. They gravitated toward bluegrass and cultivated Marie’s obvious talent through lessons with banjo virtuoso Murphy Henry. Around age 12 she began singing with her family and later with her sister as a duo, appearing at churches, festivals, community picnics and, every Saturday, on the porch of the winery her father and a partner had opened in rural Virginia, across the road from the Miller family home.

Miller also began writing songs when she was about 12 years old. “The first one I started performing was an original melody and lyrics based on a poem I’d read in Lord of the Rings,” she says, with a grin. “I was really into American music at the time —the kind of music you’d hear in a Ken Burns documentary, the people’s music, the storytelling of bluegrass and Irish music. I was attracted initially to the New Grass artists, like Nickel Creek and Alison Krauss and mainly Chris Thile. She pauses and then laughs, a little embarrassed. “I was actually 100 percent certain when I was 14 that Chris Thile and I were going to get married someday.”Miller then found herself diving into the lyricsand melodies from the likes of The Eagles to Stevie Wonder to modern hitmaker Sara Bareilles. This wide range of influences impactedher music making when she signed with Curb Records in Nashville at the age of 16where she fulfilled her dream to write songs.